We believe that access should be global, for the many communities around the world represented within the record of the British state; and computational, to provide meaningful ‘big’ data for emerging technological approaches to the archive. This research theme captures:
- Our ambition to unlock our collections in new ways, for example through AI, optical character recognition (OCR) and handwritten text recognition (HTR);
- To foreground global majority voices in our collection and centre the communities represented, working in partnership with other global institutions;
- And to overcome the immediate challenges of hazardous materials in our collection and distributed data within our heritage science and conservation practice.
Our priorities are:
- How do we make global majority histories and marginalised voices visible, in an ethical, inclusive and meaningful way, within and through our collections?
- How can we use AI, OCR/HTR and other emerging technology to datafy our digitised collections and provide computational access to our born-digital collections on a national and global scale?
- How do we enable safe and global access to the whole of our material collection, including where it is hazardous; and comprehensive access to our heritage science and conservation data?
- How do we ensure open and equitable access to our research outputs, outcomes and opportunities?
- Digital infrastructure: an open, sustainable and cost-effective digital estate for our digital collection and research outputs.
Read the Research Vision 2024-27
Want to get involved with our Research Vision?
Contact us if you would like to work with us to explore any of the research questions or challenges above.